I was forcing myself to go through the motions, to be this new woman with a new identity.
I didn’t know who I was bound to become as Blanche, but I knew I had to at least pretend to get there.
It’s Psychology 101, you see. You can trick your mind into doing anything. If I tell myself I’m Blanche Arbor long enough, I will become Blanche Arbor, Scottish Highlander and housekeeper with an accent et al.
Jinx, the demon cat, appeared, his black head butting against my leg as he walked around, eyeing the glass Christmas decorations with too much interest.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warned him. “If you break one of those, I’m throwing you out and the wolves can eat you.”
He stared at me balefully with yellow eyes.
“You think I’m kidding?”
He meowed and hissed at me before showing me his asshole and disappearing into the kitchen.
“Good talk!” I called after him, and instantly, a stab of loneliness struck me. The melancholy, the longing to be home and with Alex and my mom over the holidays struck me with a viciousness I hadn’t expected, but it was more than that, much, much more than that.
I missed those backstabbing bastards.
Each and every one of them. At night, I replayed the details of their faces, their nuances. I heard their voices in my head, their laughter, their banter.
I played with myself, thinking about their tongues, their fingers, their cocks. They’d taken me to heights I’d never even dreamed imaginable and left me begging for more. And then, they betrayed me like all of that had meant nothing to them. A lump formed in my throat, and I swallowed it away quickly. There was no crying. I had no tears left for them.
“It’s just you and me now,” I murmured, looking up at the six-foot tree. I leaned down to grab a garland from the water-damaged box on the floor and draped it artfully around the long limbs.
Carefully, I unwrapped the glass ornaments and marveled at their ugliness, a small smile on my face to overshadow the impending gloom forming in my gut. Slowly, I became aware of a whooshing noise, and I turned to look around curiously as it grew louder. Jinx mewled at me, his eyes wider than usual, and I realized the noise was coming from outside.
I hurried to the window to look into the snow-laden lawn, and suddenly, my jaw dropped in shock. A helicopter was making its descent from the heavens, and it was unmistakably the white and blue logo of Seven Drawers LTD.
“Oh no!” I cried, backing away from the window. They’d found me!
I froze in my spot, unsure of what course of action to take. If I ran, they’d find me in a heartbeat with the chopper. If I stayed, what would they do?
I needed to hide. They wouldn’t burst in the door, would they?
Yet I did nothing. I didn’t run. I didn’t hide. I simply remained in place and waited for the inevitable knock, which came almost ten minutes later.
I closed my eyes, trying to catch my breath.
If they had wanted to hurt you, they would have done that by now. They had every opportunity.
The knocking was neither loud nor threatening, but it was incessant. They weren’t going away. And I didn’t want them to. I’d been dreaming about their faces, after all.
“Sasha!”
That was precisely what I’d needed as inspiration, and I bolted toward the door before they could call me by my real name again. I flung the door open and glared at the team, whose faces melted in relief in unison.
“I told you!” Stevie squealed, jumping around like he was doing an Irish jig. “I knew it was her!”
“Keep your damned voices down!” I hissed, yanking them inside. “The neighbors will talk.”
A look of contrition fell upon them, and I herded them into the living room angrily.
“What do you want?” I snapped, but my eyes were racing over all their faces, checking them out for signs of tiredness or upset. They looked drawn, a little worse for wear but still the same handsome septuplets I’d missed with every fiber of my being.
“What do we want?” Graham asked in shock. “Are you really asking us that? We want—no, we need you to come home with us!”
I scoffed, folding my arms over my bosom and stared at him. “Why? So you can lie to me some more? Did Mirror, Mirror send you here?”
“Sasha, you—” Dan started to say, but I cut him off.
“I’m not Sasha, not anymore.”
“Blanche, then,” Stevie said, and I looked at him in surprise.
“How did you know that?”
He shrugged and grinned. “I put a trace on Alex’s financials. When I saw she was sending money to Blanche Arbor in Scotland, I knew it had to be you.”
I didn’t know whether to be furious or awed by his ingenuity.